Leadership Mindset

As a dedicated bunch of leadership development nerds, our team spends most of its time focused on people’s work lives. And whether the topic of the moment is coaching, collaboration, or change; everything we do shares some things in common. One of those things is taking an honest look at where we get off track. We’re always working to help people recognize how basic human drives get in our way and prevent us from engaging people and the real issues that matter. Then we challenge them with new approaches and tools to be more effective in their organizations.
At this time of year, I’m reminded that the family is an … [Read more...]

Every field of study has its own running debates. How exactly did the dinosaurs go extinct? Do we live in a single universe or a multiverse? How can a three-dimensional figure have a finite volume and an infinite surface area? Did someone put the chocolate in the peanut butter or the peanut butter on the chocolate?
In organizational behavior, one of the running debates has to do with competence and sociability. It seems obvious that we’d prefer leaders who have lots of both, but those people appear to be in short supply. If you have to pick one, is it better to be a “competent jerk” or a “loveable fool”? … [Read more...]

Under pressure we are prone to underperform.
It plays out like this. A manager has a few concerns about one of her direct reports. She also sees untapped potential. Over the past year the person hasn’t really improved. The manager decides it’s time to have an honest conversation and really help this person up their game. She fully intends to be open and honest, but instead she softens the message, asks lots of leading questions and eventually makes some suggestions.
None of this is what she planned or even believes is effective, but it happened anyway. The direct report knows something is wrong, but the … [Read more...]

"I don’t have time to coach or develop my employees as a manager, I have too much real work to do…”
We hear it. We get it. We just don’t buy it.
We do a lot of work with leaders in specialized industries like pharmaceuticals and high-tech, and specialized functions like finance, sales, and IT. These leaders have highly-valued subject matter expertise, and they usually share another characteristic. They’re not only managers – they’re producers – who contribute work as individuals on top of managing their teams.
Some examples:
The sales VP who manages key accounts directly, plus steps in to help her team … [Read more...]

Stakeholders matter. Work is so complex today, that nearly every project has broader implications and affects many different players. Yet our clients tell us that these interconnected projects fail because the managers driving them aren’t able to work their networks and get the input and support they need from all the stakeholders involved.
The 5 Pitfalls
A manager’s bad habits will get in the way of getting advice and input from key stakeholders – slowing progress and jeopardizing strong results. You have to get at the underlying patterns that prevent people from openly and effectively engaging their … [Read more...]

Have you ever had friends who constantly quote some movie, using it as a kind of shorthand in conversations? If you haven’t seen the film in a long time, or never saw it to begin with, it can get old fast.
Well, that’s exactly what happened to me. I joined a new team this year and some of my colleagues love The Big Lebowski. So, not wanting to be left out of a good source of pop culture references, I went back for a rerun of it. Maybe because my colleagues and I are bunch of OD and leadership nerds, or maybe because I took one too many grad school courses in literature and cultural studies, this time around I … [Read more...]

Authenticity in leadership has gotten renewed attention lately and been the subject of some serious debate. “Authenticity” is one of those words that sounds wonderful, but is hard to pin down. After all, nobody woke up this morning saying, “I think I’ll go be inauthentic today.” But what does it actually mean to be authentic, and how can you be more of it?
I recently read a post from Harvard Business School Professor and former CEO Bill George that listed five qualities of authentic leaders, and then went on to discuss at least six more. Avolio and Gardner’s research covers as many as 29 components. And I’m … [Read more...]

Mindset Drives Behavior… Behavior Drives Impact…
Organizations are working to remove boundaries — hierarchical, horizontal, external, and geographic—to achieve the speed, flexibility, integration, and innovation needed to thrive in today's world. Where companies fall short is in developing the necessary mindset within their people to take advantage of that work. Building a boundaryless mindset takes more than training, it requires a transformative process that moves people from where they are to where they need to be.
The Mindsets
The research is clear. There is no shortcut to building boundaryless … [Read more...]

Every executive we talk to wants more leadership from their people.
We decided to try and understand why. We constructed a simple survey asking leaders them how much of their time they spend leading vs. engaged in task work. The answer is usually somewhere around 15%. We then ask them why this happens, and the answer is always, “we just don’t have enough time.”
From this we have learned two things. One is that for leadership to become a larger slice of people’s time, there must be a change in mindset. A mindset that sees leadership as a discipline—not an option. And two, leadership must become a sense of … [Read more...]